Over 3.5 million people in the United States make their living as truck drivers, and there are some 300,000 taxi and private hire licenses in England alone. Will the imminent arrival of AI powered self-driving vehicles mean that we are about to see a Spinning Jenny moment for people who currently drive for a living? If so, what will all those people do next?

And beyond the breathless hype about robotics and AI, robots are already big business. Over 10,000 units of SoftBank's Pepper humanoid robot are already in the field. Robot greeters are increasingly common in Japanese shops and restaurants, and starting to arrive in Europe. Across the world, Amazon has automated its distribution centres, with over 45,000 robots working 24/7 to fulfill customer orders, equivalent to 12% of its workforce.

In this talk I'll look at the state of the art in robots and AI, and what this tells us about the near term future that our children and grandchildren will live in.

About the speaker: Martin Hamilton, Futurist, Jisc

My work at Jisc is all about generating and channelling new ideas, and building partnerships to bring them to fruition. I’m particularly interested in the societal implications of ubiquitous robotics and artificial intelligence, and humanity's emergence as a true interplanetary species.